All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.

Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

4/08/2013

Hot or Not?

One of the aspects about game that fascinates me is the tendency to overrate the looks of women. The recent news story about Meagan Simmons AKA the "Attractive Convict" is a great example. Back in 2006 Meagan got busted for DUI. Her mug shot is posted online and some guys are going gaga over it. The link above will take you to a story that has lots of pictures of Megan, including the mugshot and some sexy and some everyday shots as well. Clearly Meagan isn't that hot. On a 1 to 10 scale she rates a 5.5 to maybe a 6.5 on her best day (which was when she was about 10 years younger and had 4 fewer kids). She is not a 10, or a 9 or a 8 or even a 7. Her best rating might have been a 6.5. That's it, anything more is wishful thinking.

Keep in mind I'm strictly talking about looks here. She might be a great person who's very fun and enjoyable to be around. She might be awesome in the sack and a great cook. For all I know she sings in the choir and teaches Sunday school. All I'm focusing on is her looks, not her desirability as a mate or LTR. She's not that hot, she's a solid average to a tad better than that.

Which brings me to the point about attractiveness. The manosphere focuses on girls in the "10" to "8" range. Either the same handful of girls get around a lot, or some guys need to get their eyes checked. Overall, women may have a better grip on where they, and other women fit into the scale than men do.

The chart above is a reflection of ALL women. It does not include things like" race, height, weight, hair color, body style, butt size, boobs, etc. Yes all those things are important to you as an individual man, but they are totally unimportant comparing one woman to the rest of the herd.

For a couple of years, say between 17 to 20 years old, I had a thing for red heads. I don't know why, but I seemed to ask out a number of girls that had hair that went from bright red (think bozo the clown) to a tempting strawberry blond. They were all normal weight and height. Some had long hair and some short. Boobs ranged form a B cup to a substantial DD. The main thing was red hair. For some reason I kept coming back to liking that feature. I discounted asking out brunettes and blonds.

This is something all guys do. We eliminate girls by category from our "desirability" list. We all have that "list". Some guys want a blond, or big tits or a short girl etc. All those things go into our personal hotness scale. What most guys are talking about when they say a girl is a 8 or a 9, is how she fits into their personal scale. Right off the bat we look at race and other factors and categorize accordingly. The key is that all of those factors are personal and subjective.

If a guy thinks a short blond with an A cup, short hair, green eyes and a pear shaped butt and lots of girl fur is hottest thing on earth, that's what he calls a 10 or maybe a 9. The truth is that compared to all other girls she's likely to be a 4 or 4.5. He is talking about what HE likes. To him she is a solid 9 or 10. In relationships, that is how its supposed to be. In evaluating or starting a relationship, its a bad thing to do, or at least to let on that your doing it.

Here is one of the problems I see. A guy approaches a girl, who rates a solid 5 on the real life hotness scale. He starts telling her that she is a "8" or a "9". The girl knows she is average, and she may have some doubts about being a 5; she may see herself as more of a 3.5. She does a little assessment of her own and arrives at a value of 5.1 for the guy. From her point a view this 5.1 is trying to con her into his thinking that she is a 9. She knows he's lying. Nothing in her experience gives this approach any credibility. Mr. 5.1 starts to drop down to Mr 3.9 and the longer he talks, the lower he goes in the rating. She finds herself getting more turned off and then creeped out. Unless a restraining order is required, that ends it for Mr. 5.1.

That's what's going on for Megan Simmons. She's 5.5ish girl. Some guys found a mugshot where she is feeling a whooping 1.0. Based on that pic they are telling her how hot she is. She knows she's not all that hot. She knows she is being lied to and as a former Hooters waitress she knows why. So even though she is on the rebound from her failed marriage, she gets turned off by the attention. Understandably she is creeped out. What kind of looser tells a women that he's drooling over her because she looks so hot, on one of the worst days of her life? The kind who has bad breath, no job, lives in his mothers basement and does bad things to puppies, that's who.

That's how it works. There is a real life hotness scale and there is your personal hotness scale. Never confuse the two. Never let the girl know that there is two scales, how you see her and how others see her. Unless of course your married. Keep in mind that there is only one of two ways that your going to bed with a 10 tonight. The first is if your banging super models. The second is if your wife is everything you desire. In which case, who cares if she is a 4.3 to the rest of the world, when she is a 10 to you?

12 comments:

I realize that depending on where you establish your confidence intervals and standard deviations that the range for “average” may produce different percentage values. That said, most women are between 4 a low average, and 6 a high average. It doesn’t matter much in practical terms if this is 68% of the population or 78% of the population. I realize that categorizing down to a 3 on the left tail and a 7 on the right tail would have been more statistically accurate. If you are worried about such things, I suggest you find a good solid 2.5 and get her really drunk. That way you can shave her mustache and both of you can have a good time.

I'm not sure the weighting works quite like you think it does. If you look at this study it holds that an "average" face is rated fairly high in beauty. So while looks may be in a normal distribution (bell curve), beauty rating would, I think, be rated higher. It would be interesting to turn this around and run a study "Rate this person's facial attractiveness 1-10."

I’ve seen that study before. Your point is well taken. Let me throw another aspect into the mix to think about.

Consider a hypothetical situation: say that female face #1 and female face #2 are exactly the same in terms of symmetry. If you change only 1 aspect, like completion you will create another face that would be more (or less) appealing to someone. With all the other factors we can change, skin pigmentation, hair and eye color, etc, we will soon develop a large, almost endless variety of equally symmetrical faces that are distinguishable from each other.

In our pretend situation every female face is equal in terms of construction, the only factors that change are cosmetic. Adding a little more variety, we can change their height, weight, body style, breast size, amount of body hair etc. For argument sake lets say that is the case, the face symmetry is 100% the same all the other factors are changed into however many different combinations that there are.

My guess is that in such a situation we would still be able to establish a hierarchy of “hotness” based solely on what most people find attractive. Most men (and women) will tend to prefer one variation over the other. I grant you that the preference will change somewhat from time to time or in a culture or anyone of a number of variables. However, there will still be “most desired” and “least desired” characteristics.

I think we agree that there are ranges of hotness from 1-10. While looks measured objectively (eg, assigning numeric scores for aspects like symmetry, nose bridge to eye width ratio, etc.) you'd end up with a typical looking bell-curve normal distribution with the peak right in the middle, measured subjectively is different. If the subjective "Assign a 1-10 hotness score to this person" test is given, I would think that you'd end up with an average score of 7-7.5 tapering off faster as you go up, and slower as you go down.

I think we are saying the same thing. If indeed say 75% or 80% of the population has a high degree of facial symmetry as it related to beauty than it is reasonable to conclude that more people would be inside the attractive zone. If that is the case (I don’t have a problem going along with you on this) then my bell curve would be flatter but still basically correct. Now it’s true that the attractive zone may have to be stretched out a bit to accomplish this say a range of 3.5 to 6.5. I could live with that.

Another point on my methodology, I believe statistically speaking that a sample size that includes all the members of a population is by definition a normal distribution. So a universal “hotness factor” that relies on comparing all women to each other would be from a statics point of view valid, whereas the individual “hotness factor” would still be highly subjective.